Tag: sound

Have you ever wondered just how loud a noise is? During a recent review of the SoundJaw iPad accessory, I needed to see if it really increased the volume of the iPad's speaker. What did I use to measure the sound level for the review? The iPhone version of Decibel Meter Pro (US$0.99, universal)...

The stealthy and powerful Option key strikes again. If you need to quickly switch between audio input or output choices, no need to open up System Preferences and click around. Just hold down Option and left-click on the Sound menu icon at the right side of the menu bar. You can adjust your inp...

When you're in a noisy environment, such as a café or study room, or even when there's just the odd sound to distract you in a room of silence, concentrating can be difficult. You could play some music, but often music can be just as distracting as the background noise, especially when y...

Apple has reportedly hired the inventor of THX to head up all its audio projects, Leo Laporte said. Earlier today Laporte tweeted "I have it on good authority that Tomlinson Holman (of THX fame) is joining Apple to run audio. Major upgrade."
Holman is a legend in the audio industry. Among his...

A new patent by Apple reveals that the company has been working on gesture-based commands determined with audio transducers on the corners of a given surface -- in other words, as your fingers press and tap on a surface (like a keyboard or a computer casing or even the bezel around an iPad), the au...

Picture this: you're hanging out at a friend's house, and the familiar "doodle-dee!" of the iPhone's Tri-tone alert sound goes off. But four people simultaneously start reaching for their iPhones, because they're all using that sound for SMS/MMS alerts. Or how about this: you're on a bike ride and g...

WOWee (not the robot company) launched in mid-2010, selling a rechargeable portable speaker slightly larger than the original iPod. The WOWee One features a 20-hour rechargeable battery that you charge via USB, a small speaker on the top and a pulsing bass driver that transmits your lower frequen...

Soundrop isn't really a game -- it's more of a musical instrument, although you can play with it for quite a while. The app presents a small hole that constantly drops balls out at a certain rate, while you draw lines on the screen with your finger. Where the balls hit the lines, a tone is sounded, ...

The picture above comes from AppleInsider, who are claiming that Apple is about to release a Mac mini with an HDMI port in place of the current DVI connector. And that sound you just heard was hundreds of thousands of mini-based entertainment center owners everywhere crying out in excitement, as a ...

We met them while they were shooting on the Apple Campus, and now the creators of the Dutch site onemorething.nl have posted their interview with Apple sound designer Jim Reekes (who also appears in Welcome To Macintosh). They met up with Reekes while at Macworld in San Francisco a little while b...

Adjusting the volume on your Mac via the keyboard is pretty easy: there are 3 buttons, one for Volume Down, one for Volume Up, and one for Mute.
When you adjust the volume, a sound is played to help you determine when it is loud enough or quiet enough. Most times I find this helpful, but sometime...

Every now and then I'll have an "I never knew about that" moment as I come across a setting or nuance in Mac OS X that I never realized existed. Take, for instance, character viewer, which allows you to display a variety of characters in your document. Whether you're a switcher or seasoned Mac vete...

The department of Computing and Engineering and the School of Music at the University of Michigan have teamed up to offer an interesting course as part of their music program. Students are learning to make music using an iPhone or iPod touch. The generated tones can be altered by moving the phone us...

Every so often something hits the App Store that is interesting but difficult to explain. At the same time, it is enjoyable to use, and you tip your hat to the people who thought it up, even if it has no real practical use. Mujik [App Store] is a free (for now) app that allows you to create musical ...